Frist’s take 2 on the Taliban.

Is it me or is all hell breaking loose in this country’s politics? We’re in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once. You’ve got the Foley debacle. The revelations in the Woodward book. The NIE revelations that almost seem like old news now. A major part of the pre-9/11 story that somehow never saw the light of day and may bring down Condi Rice. And did I mention the election?

Is it over for Denny Hastert?

I’ve thought since late Friday night that Hastert and probably other members of the House leadership were finished. And you’ve likely seen now that the Washington Times has called for Hastert’s resignation.

My take is that Hastert cooked his own goose in the first half dozen or so hours of this scandal. At one level, he’s Speaker. So by definition, anything that went wrong in the House is his responsibility. And with the amount of voltage coursing through this story, he was always going to be in a very tight spot.

But when this thing broke, most of the key House leaders were in some sense or another saying, ‘Yeah, I heard about it. I did X. Clearly that wasn’t enough.’ Denny Hastert was the only guy, as this thing exploded Friday night, who was obviously lying.

Pretty much everybody in the leadership knew something about it. And most of them remembered telling Hastert. But he’d never heard about it. He was out of the loop. John Boehner just made up remembering telling him. Rodney Alexander contacting Hastert’s office. He never heard. Tom Reynolds was lying too, until it was clear Reynolds wouldn’t eat his words like Boehner.

The scandal — to the extent we are talking not about Foley as an individual but the leadership’s role in enabling him — is about accountability. And at the gut check moment, Hastert lied to duck responsibility.

Everyone could see it. And from that moment on he couldn’t, and I suspect he can’t, shake that defining impression.

On Friday night Hastert could have said, ‘I heard about this. I thought we’d taken care of it. Clearly there was much more there than we realized. Now we’re going to get to the bottom of it.’ If he had, I don’t think we’d be hearing those calls for resignation, at least not yet.

Yet all of us can only be who we are. He could have said that. But he didn’t. I suspect because he’s the same guy who let Foley run unchecked for years, presided over a regime that enabled him, like so much else. It was in character.

Is it the curse of Ron Bonjean?

Bonjean is Denny Hastert’s spokesman. He was spokesman for Trent Lott during the Strom Thurmond debacle.

Like a one man Bermuda Triangle …

WSJ: House GOP’s real sin was coddling gays.

Nut graf, for lack of a better word …

But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts’ decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where’s Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

Hard being a Republican in today’s PC world.

I’m dying to get a hold of a transcript of Foley lawyer David Roth’s press conference today after seeing this squib in the Times …

At the news conference Monday night, Mr. Roth, Mr. Foley’s lawyer, denied that Mr. Foley had ever had inappropriate physical contact with minors. “Mark Foley has never, ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor in his life,” Mr. Roth said. “He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile.”

No inappropriate sexual contact with a minor? That’s a great line. I guess the idea is that he does it strictly by the book. Straight missionary, no chaser.

I’m waiting for tomorrow’s press conference when this joker announces he’s suing himself for malpractice.

GOP leaders go into crisis mode over Foley scandal’s aftermath. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Majority Leader John Boehner reconsiders, re-blames Hastert.

There are a number of differing accounts of the intelligence briefing given to Condi Rice in July 2001 about Al Qaeda — but one thing is for sure: the 9/11 Commission knew about it, but omitted any mention of it from their report. So what gives?

Is that a threat?

Denny Hastert told Rush Limbaugh this afternoon that he’s planning to campaign for Republican reps in “thirty something districts” before election day.

Who are the lucky thirty?